After more than two decades of absence, Hammer Films returns to horror with Beyond the Rave, an online serial that heralds
the resurgence of one of Britain’s best-loved film companies. Beyond the Rave is produced for Hammer by Pure Grass Films,
from an original story by Tom Grass.

Says CEO Simon Oakes, “Hammer is a great British brand; we intend to take it back into production and develop its global potential”. The new direction pledges to maintain the same high standards that made Hammer one of the world’s most respected and influential genre companies, and to entertain both its loyal fans and a new generation of horror viewers.  Hammer - which has not released a film since 1979 – is also
returning to feature production and has several exciting projects in development. With Beyond the Rave, the company wishes to give long-time followers and new audiences an early taste of things to come: original productions, using new technologies and featuring the hottest up-and-coming talent.

Drawing inspiration from the works of Bram Stoker and Anne Rice as well as from eighties classics The Lost Boys and Near Dark, Beyond the Rave, a vampire story set in England’s underground party scene, is a combination of traditional horror themes and contemporary setting and characters. The story follows the last hours of freedom of local soldier Ed, who is flying out to Iraq the following morning. With the help
of his best friend Necro, he spends his last night in the UK tracking down his missing girlfriend Jen, last seen partying with a bizarre group of hardcore night-time ravers led by the mysterious Melech. But as he catches up with Jen at a party in a remote forest, Ed discovers that Melech’s crowd, who are hosting the event, are looking for more than a night of fun, and that not everyone will make it through to dawn…

Directed by director Matthias Hoene, known for his awardwinning shorts, commercials and music videos, Beyond the Rave features performances from Nora-Jane Noone (The Descent), Jamie Dornan (Marie-Antoinette), Tamer Hassan (Layer Cake, The Ferryman, Eastern Promises), Sebastian Knapp (28 Days Later, One Point O), Les Simpson (Dog Soldiers, upcoming Doomsday), Lois Winstone (When Evil Calls) and Steve Sweeney (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). There are also special appearances by Hammer legend Ingrid Pitt, Sadie Frost (Bram Stoker’s
Dracula) and Phil Bush (lead singer of The Cazals).

Beyond the Rave’s special effects will be handled by Tristan Versluis, one of the UK’s best new FX artists, whose credits include Jake West’s Evil Aliens, Billy O’Brien’s Isolation, Adam Mason’s Broken and The Devil’s Chair, and more recently Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz and Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd.


Producer Ben Grass concludes, “Beyond the Rave was inspired by Tom and my own experiences of raves: the great highs, and the
demons that can lurk in the dark before dawn. It's jam packed with great characters and encounters. The narrative hurtles along to a big, juicy conclusion, and all along it's peppered with great tunes and visceral action.”

http://www.beyondtherave.com/beyond-the-rave-press-release.pdf
http://www.hammerfilms.com

Here's the trailer:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=23838631

Fangs for a new take on classic Hammer
horrorJaci Stephen The Guardian, Monday June 23, 2008

Will the geek get the girl? It's the big question of thousands of romantic movies, and in Beyond the Rave, it's here again, this time with a few provisos: will the geek get the girl (a) before she decides that she wants him for lunch, and (b) before her mates eat all of his mates in an eight-course buffet? Most important of all, will he, purely in order to get the girl, choose a life of blood-sucking and dodgy teeth (plus immortality), over watching his peers die in Iraq and, eventually, dying himself.Whew! They are big questions in the first Hammer Horror film since 1976, which has been showing exclusively on MySpace. Directed by Matthias Hoene from a script by Tom Grass, the last episode started screening a week ago, and all 20 will be available on DVD in the autumn.

The story begins with a soldier finding a man enjoying a girl's neck in a dark wood. You know instantly that this is Hammer with a twist when he says "Don't uck with me, you hit", which makes a change from the kind of "Hurry, run, the vampires are coming!" kind of response we are used to. It transpires that the scene is all in the head of soldier Ed (Jamie Dornan), who is lying in a coma in a military hospital, and in a flashback to one month previously, we learn of the events that took place the night before he was due to leave for Iraq.

All Ed wants is a jolly night: to see his girlfriend, Jen (Nora-Jane Noone) and to go to a rave with his geeky mate, Necro (Matthew Forrest), who, true to geek form, wears a pair of glasses that, miraculously, survive the terrible events that follow (where do movie geeks buy their indestructible glasses?).

The first problem is that nobody knows where the rave is because vampires are no Sat Nav when it comes to advertising their parties. This lot, who are blessed with long black nails, select a couple of hard stomachs and carve what appear to be the letters FBP on them. How you RSVP is something of a mystery. Only when Ed sees the letters reflected in a mirror does he realize that FBP is 98.7 in reverse, a radio frequency that broadcasts details of the underground rave. And so let the fun begin.

The head of the vampires is Melech (Sebastian Knapp), who takes a shine to Jen and wants her to go in the vampire-mobile (or whatever transport vampires use) to an island, where they will all live happily ever after. "We leave tomorrow for distant shores," he tells her. "Is there a berth with your name on it?"

Knapp is hilarious - delivering ridiculous lines with the air of seriousness that such nonsense requires - but the real laughs belong to the Crocker brothers, a threesome of complete ineptitude who try to take on the vampires in several bouts of gang warfare. "We're in a bit of bother 'ere, aren't we?" they note, after accidentally kicking a loose head in the middle of the road. Rich (Tamer Hassan) is later held aloft by the throat and, when finally dropped, choking, gives the thumbs-up to his brothers. Their misguided belief that they can win this war is the funniest thing of the film, and Rich's two-finger salute just before he dies, a triumph, of sorts.

An undercurrent of seriousness is ever-present in the subject of Iraq, at one point compared to the vampire hostage situation that is killing hundreds of innocent people. This adds a flavour of the morality tale to the horror story, but is never overplayed in what is essentially a clever, and at times brilliant, take on a familiar genre.

Much of the brilliance lies in some laugh-aloud lines. "You're gonna have to kill people and drink their blood," Jen tells Nick, when he is deciding whether to join the vampire-mobile. Nick claims he has never felt more alive. What would they prefer, he asks her and Ed: go to war or stack supermarket shelves? Sorry, Nick, but alongside a blood smoothie every morning, Tesco wins hands-down for me.

For some, it's a happy ending; others lose their lives fighting tooth and nail for survival. I won't give it away, but let's just say that after his last night of leave, if Ed survives, Iraq will be a breeze.

The credits are huge for what is an outstanding internet production, and good luck in the future to all those who played even small parts, such as "man with ripped throat" (Mark Evans). Special congratulations must go to Chris Lyons of Fangs FX, for "special effects teeth". Now there's a man you can rely on for a soundbite when he picks up his award.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/23/television.internet/print